[texhax] simple rotate/invert character

[Matthew Leingang]

I sent this to Bryan yesterday, but I thought I'd resend to the list  
because it also answers the alignment question.  With the rotating  
package you can rotate characters but keep the baseline where you  
want it.

--Matt

On Mar 31, 2008, at 11:39 AM, Bryan W. Lepore wrote:

> is there a short command to rotate/invert a letter?  so that without
> having to start a new environment, one could do something like :
>
> \invert{B}
>
> or
>
> \rotate{B}
>
> so the "B" gets inverted or rotated?
>
> -bryan

Dear Byran,

Good question.  It's a little bit tricky because TeX is used to  
putting characters on a page, and once you start rotating characters  
they're not regular characters anymore.  You need a graphical  
solution, which then becomes dependent on the post-TeX processing  
methods (e.g., dvips or pdftex).

If you use regular LaTeX and dvips, try the rotate package.  In  
pdfLaTeX, this works:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{rotating}% provides a rotate environment
\newcommand{\rotxc}[1]{\begin{sideways}#1\end{sideways}}
\newcommand{\invert}[1]{\rotxc{\rotxc{#1}}}

\begin{document}
\begin{itemize}
\item regular B
\item rotate \rotxc B
\item invert \invert B
\end{itemize}
\end{document}

Hope that helps!

--Matthew Leingang

--
Matthew Leingang
Preceptor in Mathematics
Harvard University

http://www.math.harvard.edu/~leingang/vCard.vcf